Harvard Bans Sex With Students: Finally Joins Other Schools In Banning Professors From Sex With Their Students

Harvard University has joined other schools that have banned professors from having sexual or romantic relationships with their students.

While policies against such relationships already exist, many colleges only discourage sex between professors and students, not ban them, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

Although a national group of professors does not favor such a ban, relationship policies in Harvard, Yale University, and the University of Connecticut show that times are changing, according to Bloomberg report.

"Undergraduates come to college to learn from us," said Alison Johnson, a Harvard history professor who chaired the panel that wrote the broad policy. "We're not here to have sexual or romantic relationships with them."

The previous policy only prohibited relationships with "one's students," meaning only students who attend one professor's class but not other students in the university.

The rule applies to Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, whose members teach most of the school's undergraduates. The new ruling also bans members of the faculty from having romantic or sexual relationships with graduate students under their supervision. The restrictions also apply to lab workers and dissertation advisees.

Harvard started to review its policies in 2013 after the U.S. Education Department held a probe on its responses to sexual assault and harassment reports.

The policy revision sparked a debate in Harvard's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as many students and parents said they assumed that such relationship has always been prohibited.

"It should have been the policy everywhere," said Jack Smith, a senior sociology major who was on the committee that wrote the revision. "Most of the people I've come into contact feel the same way."

Even though the policy statement of the American Association of University Professors in Washington said relationships between professors and students are ripe for "exploitation," and faculty members should take steps to ensure "unbiased evaluation" of the student, the statement stopped short of recommending a ban on student-faculty affairs, said Bloomberg.

"These relationships are going to occur on campus and you must put as many ethical checks on them as possible, but a blanket prohibition doesn't seem appropriate," said Anita Levy, a senior program officer in the professors' association. "You don't throw the whole thing into darkness by prohibiting it," she said.

Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, prohibited relationships between undergraduates and faculty as early as 2010. The University of Connecticut enforced a similar policy in 2013.